1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to a fund-raising terminal for managing contributions; and, more particularly, it relates to a fund-raising electronic terminal that gathers credit card contributions, debit card contributions, and cash contributions, and accepts, stores, and displays visually numerical information regarding the monetary amount of a contribution. The invention provides a method of fund raising and providing substantiation for contributions made to fund raising organizations.
As is well known, fund-raising organizations are typically assisted in the solicitation of contributions through the use of pledges, and the like. A contributor is requested to make a pledge, and then later to honor the pledge by payment of the amount pledged. A problem with this type of fund-raising is that a number of pledges do not get honored. Some contributors forget about their pledge. Another problem is that when a pledge is solicited the contributor may not have his check book with him or may not have adequate cash on hand to make a contribution. Moreover, the contributor's financial situation may have changed between the making of a pledge and the honoring the pledge so that he no longer has adequate funds, even though the contributor had adequate funds available at the time a pledge was made. In any event, in such situations fund-raising organizations lose pledged contributions. If a contributor is a cardholder and wishes to make a contribution at a fund-raising event by way of an information bearing card, for example a credit or debit card, there maybe no terminals available for use by the contributor so that a contributor cannot make a contribution conveniently or rapidly.
Another possibility is that a fund-raising campaign may have a short time period allocated for the solicitation of contributions. Known information bearing card processing terminals require a procedure of verification of authorization of amounts of the contributions, validity of the cardholder's accounts, or identity of the cardholder made after each transaction and are thus too slow for passing the terminal from contributor to contributor as later herein described. Consequently, the known types of terminals do not allow a cardholder to make a contribution easily and readily. Consequently, due to the inconvenience a cardholder experiences he or she may be less likely to make a contribution. Moreover, these types of terminals do not allow a plurality of cardholders to sequentially make contributions rapidly during a time allocated to the contribution process to be practical. Interposing a verification of authorization step between each contribution transaction results in delay, that further inconveniences a group of contributors who are cardholders making them less likely to contribute by use of a credit card or debit card or any other information bearing card.
Known methods by which a contributor makes a contribution do not induce or facilitate the making of a contribution in that when approached by a fund-raiser, a contributor may not have cash on him to make a contribution. Moreover, a contributor may not have his check book with him. Hence, there is a high probability that the fund-raiser will not receive any contribution from an individual if that is the case. There exists a need for the making of a fund-raising terminal for contributions by cardholders and a method of fund raising that induces and facilitates the making of a contribution.
Furthermore, processing of contributions is costly and generally requires time and resources: to solicit a pledge on the part of a fund-raising organization, to have a contributor fill out a pledge card, to have the contributor honor the pledge, and considerable time and resources to process a pledge made by cash or check to get it into the fund-raising organization's account. Processing contributions also involves transaction costs or use of volunteers that include opening envelopes, counting cash contributions, segregating cash contributions, deposit costs associated with depositing cash into a fund-raising organization account, and the like. There exists a need for a quicker, less costly method and apparatus to solicit and manage contributions.
It would be highly desirable to solve the variety of problems enumerated above facing fund-raisers, and members of fund-raising organizations in soliciting contributions by way of information bearing cards.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a fund-raising method and fund-raising management terminal system that can collect, analyze, and display statistical information associated with a contribution or a plurality of respective contributions and provide useful quantitative data.